Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Furniture King Fakes His Own Death - The Jose Lantigua story
04 Feb 2025
This is the story of Jose Lantigua and Daphne Simpson, and his faking his death by claiming he has mad cow disease.
Full Episode
So this guy, his name's Jose, and Jose's got a big problem. He's dead. Super duper dead. Now, how did he get so dead? Well, see, Jose's a millionaire. He owns a chain of discount furniture stores called Circle K Furniture, and he puts himself in all the commercials, so he's kind of a local celebrity. Stand with us at Circle K. Buy American.
But then, one day, it all changes, because Jose meets this woman. Daphne. And Daphne thinks his old ass is thoin, so they fall in love and they get married and they seem happy. Here's the thing about Jose, though. Jose's a furniture salesman, so he's kind of a bullshitter.
He loves to tell stories about how he was in the military and how he's a super secret special ops officer and how he worked with the CIA on top secret missions. Yeah, sure you did, Jose. Regardless, Daphne loves him and she believes his stories. And everything seems to be going well for them.
Until... While Jose projects the image of being a millionaire and owning this successful furniture business, in reality, he's kind of broke. His stores haven't been profitable in a while. In fact, while he claims to be a rich man, he's actually more than $11 million in debt.
And I guess rather than admit to Daphne that he's not really a millionaire and that his businesses are failing, one day he comes up with a different kind of plan to get himself out of debt. He plans to die. Well, not exactly die. He plans to fake his own death. So he sits his wife Daphne down and he tells her he's dying. And he says he's dying from mad cow disease, which is a brain disease.
Now, how did he get mad cow disease? Well, Jose tells Daphne that he got it while he was in the military on his super secret special ops missions where he got to work with the CIA. All right, I gotta pick you up for this.
So this freaking bullsh**ter tells his wife and kids and everyone that he got mad cow while on a special ops mission in the jungle and that part of his mission was that he had to interact with the locals in the area and that one of the things the locals did in that jungle was eat raw monkey brains. So he says he ate raw monkey brains in the jungle and that this gave him mad cow disease.
It's just so stupid. The variant of mad cow that humans get is very rare and it'll kill you within like a year. So if Jose really had it, he would have died within like 12 months of contracting it. not 30 whatever years later after he left the military, got married, and started a chain of discount furniture stores. So anyway, he goes and tells Daphne he only has six months to a year to live.
And of course, Daphne believes him and she is devastated. I mean, she can't lose her husband. I mean, they just got married not too long ago. But he tells her that there may be hope because his only chance of survival is that if he leaves the U.S. and goes to Colombia and gets some kind of experimental medical treatment. And of course, Daphne believes him.
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